2019 Articles

February 2019

It's well known that the best ice fishing happens early and late in the season. Many species are still putting on the feed bag when the first ice seals the lakes shut, while longer days and the approach of spawning season for many species brings another burst of activity before the ice gives out altogether. But in between, things can slow a bit in what some anglers refer to as the February Blahs.
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January 2019

Northern pike have a rap sheet with ice anglers. These top end carnivores have always held a special place in ice fishing lore simply for their attitude. Some of my earliest ice fishing memories involved staring down a hole in a shallow weedy lake. The weeds seemed vibrant like a neon green carpet. We would stare down the hole for hours watching pike and perch swim underneath. Each pike seeme... more

If you really think about it, an angler's year can be divided into three neat periods. There's the open water season, when we're fishing every chance we get. There's the winter, when we still fish, but through a hole in the ice. And there's that brief, panic-stricken few days in between, as the last ice melts and it's a mad scramble to get our gear together for another open water season.
If yo... more

Ice fishing is fun, but I prefer casting in open water to drilling holes in a frozen lake. Thankfully, winter brings all sorts of great opportunities that are just a short drive away. Tennessee isn't far from my home in the Midwest, but it's a world apart in January. While our lakes are capped with a layer of ice, lakes in Tennessee remain wide open, and you fish out of a boat instead of an ice hu... more

Crappie inhabit so many different environments and ecosystems. What has always made ice fishing so much fun for me is the simple fact that each body of water will have its own personality. And that my friends is fun to figure out. There are some fisheries where we often find crappie on rock structure for example and yet other lakes or reservoirs where we find fish using locations that might see... more